Almost daily diary!

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Everyone knows mothers have eyes in the back of their head!

We had a lovely but long day out today. On the way home we crossed the Severn Bridge. Small Sprog had fallen asleep and Tall Girl, who was sitting directly behind me in the car, was quiet.

Just as we were driving onto the M5, having crossed the bridge, Tall Girl pipes up from the back " Have we crossed the bridge yet?""Yes""Oh, you never told me we were crossing it!" She complains"I didn't know I was supposed to" I retort (a mothers place is always in the wrong!)"I really wanted to see the bridge" She whines again."Well sorry" I say "I didn't know you weren't looking out of the window!""But I really wanted to see something and now I've missed it""Well don't worry then, Daddy will just do a U-turn in the fast lane!" I say sarcasticallyShe harrumphs in the back of the car. We are all tired and a bit 'tetchy'.

A few seconds later Husband shouts out "Hey, Tall Girl, there's a sign! Oh look and some trees, now there's a big blue sign......."I glance behind me. She is wearing her 'I am not amused' look together with her 'I have such stupid parents' eyebrows.Husband always knows how to make things better!

A very rare pleasure on the Severn Bridge is when one is approaching the toll booth and from a distance you see one barrier go up right after the other in a perfect Mexican wave from left to right. I have only seen it once but now I can't help but look for it!

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SUBURB......a history

The word is derived from the Old French "subb urbe" and ultimately from the Latin "suburbium", formed from "sub", meaning "under", and "urbs", meaning "city", therefore suburbis would mean under the city. Important people tended to live on hills near centers of commercial and political activity, while the lower classes often lived in marginal areas. "Under" in later usage sometimes referred variously to lesser wealth, political power, population, or population density. The first recorded usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from Wycliffe in 1380, where the form "subarbis" is used

Consigned to the wheelie bin at the end of the drive?

Half the population lives in suburbia but fewer like to admit it.Car washing on a Sunday in front of a semi-detached mock Tudor home complete with twitching net curtains is the life it conveys, to repeated ridicule.The image of a cultural wasteland between the vibrant, edgy inner city and the rural idyll was reinforced by 1970s comedies such as The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and The Good Life, and dramas like Abigail's Party.But does this prejudice have any basis today or should it be consigned to the wheelie bin at the end of the drive?By Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine